Enacting Hope and Desire in Mental Healthcare: Discursive Practices and Therapeutic Implications
Panel
Conference organised by the Italian Society of Cultural Anthropology (SIAC) in Matera, Italy
CfP for Panel: “Enacting Hope and Desire in Mental Healthcare: Discursive Practices and Therapeutic Implications”
Fifth SIAC National Conference “HOPE / DESPAIR / DESIRE” organised by the Italian Society of Cultural Anthropology (SIAC) in the stunning city of Matera, 25–27 September 2025.
Panel 14 / SIAC 2025 • SIAC Società italiana di antropologia culturale
Panel Convenors:
Giulia Sciolli, Italian National Research Council (CNR)
Roberta Martina Zagarella , Italian National Research Council (CNR)
Abstract:
The role of hope and desire for life as “practiced” in therapeutic settings, as factors shaping treatment even in situations that seem to only allow for despair, has been widely explored for conditions like cancer and chronic disabilities (e.g. Mattingly 1998, 2010). This anthropological literature has shown that hope and desire are continuously constructed and fostered through the discourses and practices of professional and family carers. Less attention has been given to mental health settings, where despair is often perceived more as part of the condition being treated and, gradually, of the very person who suffers, than as a consequence of an ‘external’ disease. What Mattingly (2010: 5) calls “a paradoxical border practice” (hope for a life beyond or notwithstanding illness) is therefore even more paradoxical in mental healthcare, especially for conditions deemed chronic. And yet hope has been found to characterise recovery narratives, therapeutic relationships and treatment engagement (Longhofer and Floersch 2010; Murphy et al. 2024; Van Dongen 1998). This panel welcomes submissions that, based on ethnographic research conducted among patients, healthcare professionals and/or family carers in specific strands of mental healthcare, show how the discursive constructions and enactments of hope and desire for life function as therapeutic tools or as points of tension in care, illuminating their transformative potential but also their limitations and ethical complexities.
Keywords: hope, desire, mental healthcare, discourse, practice
We welcome contributions in Italian and/or English 🙂
To submit a contribution, please send an email to: giulia.sciolli@cnr.it and robertamartina.zagarella@cnr.it by June 2, 2025 attaching a Word document containing:
Name of author(s)
Affiliation
Panel number and title
Paper title
Abstract (1500 characters max)
The panel will host a maximum of eight papers organised in two sessions, which will last 1 hour and 45 minutes each to allow enough time for questions and discussion.
Authors will be notified of acceptance/rejection/possible relocation of submitted proposals by June 16, and the full programme of the conference will be available July 15.
N.B. SIAC believes in sharing knowledge and in maintaining an inclusive scientific community. SIAC Conferences are open and free for both speakers and the public. No registration or membership fee is required to attend.
More info on the general conference theme can be found here (see second half of the page for English description): SPERARE / DISPERARE / DESIDERARE • SIAC Società italiana di antropologia culturale
For further logistical information on the conference you can email: convegno.siac.2025@gmail.com
We look forward to receiving your abstracts!
Giulia Sciolli and Roberta Martina Zagarella
“Shifting states and their histories in institutional care”
Panel
Hybrid Lecture
CfP for a panel on “Shifting states and their histories in institutional care”
Anthrostate conference “Shifting States”
22–24 October, 2025
Amsterdam, Netherlands
✨No registration fee, in-person only. (EASA network on Anthropologies of the State conference)
If the panel abstract below resonates with your research and you would like to join a bunch of friendly people, please send your abstract to Kristine Krause k.krause@uva.nl
The final panel including abstracts need to be submitted 11 April, so we would like have your abstract the latest 9th April.
Junior and PhD researchers particularly welcome.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Shifting states and their histories in institutional care
The anthropology of the state has long argued that states do not exist as coherent units out there but are articulated in practices, spaces and effects. One of the key spaces in which states have effects on their citizens are care institutions. They respond to crucial needs of humans; for instance as places where sicknesses are treated and frail bodies are taken care of. They can also curate major transitions such as birth and death. Care institutions such as hospitals or nursing homes are places defined by particular and persistent forms of interaction. These forms – where and how things are done, when and by whom – have often coagulated over time. They are backed up by legitimations which are not easy to question, because they are part of other non-tangible societal institutions, such as gendered division of labour, kinship and family ideologies which are specific to historically grown care and health regimes. These regimes as part of state governance can bear traces of pasts such as colonial rule, political regimes shifts or specific biopolitical projects of care and control. Institutional care can also be provided by non-state actors on behalf of the state including non-profit, religious or charity organisations but also commercial or even corporatized actors. The reasons why these actors perform or have taken over these tasks, have again their own histories often related to shifts in ways of governance of welfare state regimes.
This panel brings together papers that explore how shifting states and their histories come back resurface, or take unexpected forms within the spaces and practices of institutional care. The papers examine how historical legacies shape and haunt caregiving interactions, institutional routines, and the narratives and positionalities of those involved in these care settings. In asking how these pasts are articulated, linger on or are represented in care institutions this panel understands history not as something waiting to be discovered in the background, but as actively brought up, mobilized and presented in the field or articulated by the ethnographer. The past then becomes “history” through practices of actors in the field or through the analytical work of the ethnographer who identifies history as an absent presence in the studied situation or practice. The paper in this panel interrogate the constitutive moments where history appears, or is brought up in institutional care settings, asking, which positionings, generational memories and narratives become articulated therein.
Organized by the ReloCare Team & friends from the University of Amsterdam
(Mariusz Sapieha, Matouš Jelínek, Veronika Prieler, Shahana Siddiqui , Yuan Yan and Kristine Krause)
The Burden of Responsibility? Ethics, Power and Practice in Care Settings
Panel
Hybrid congress
CfP for panel ‚The Burden of Responsibility? Ethics, Power and Practice in Care Settings’
World Anthropological Union (WAU) 2025 Congress
November in Antigua, Guatemala
The Congress allows both online and face-to-face participation and we would love to receive your proposals
Deadline for submission is May 3rd, 2025. More information about submission here: Here you can find information about submission: https://www.waucongress2025.org/call-for-papers/
The Burden of Responsibility? Ethics, Power, and Practice in Care Settings
Abstract
Medical anthropologists have long interrogated the meanings and practices of care, from intimate forms of caregiving to institutional systems that administer and withhold care (Kleinman 1997; Mol 2008). Likewise, responsibility within health settings has been examined in terms of blame, accountability, and moral obligation (Farmer 2004; Fassin 2012; Demian, Fumanti, Lynteris 2023). However, we think that the intersection of theories of care and of responsibility could benefit from further exploration. We begin by asking: What do we mean when we speak of responsibility in contexts of care? We encourage contributors to critically reflect on the specificities that the term ‚responsibility’ assumes in care settings compared to other contexts, as well as on the ambiguities and difficulties involved in defining what responsibility consists of in such settings. How are practices of care entangled with responsibilities, both assumed and imposed? How do individuals and institutions negotiate the burden of care, and who is deemed responsible when care falls short or results in harm? What happens when responsibility is fragmented or resisted, and how are these processes shaped by power relations, gendered expectations, and neoliberal policies?
This panel seeks contributions that investigate the intersections of care and responsibility in health contexts globally. We invite paper proposals focusing on the intricate and often contested relationship between care and responsibility within (but not limited to) health and healing practices. In an era marked by increasingly complex health systems, structural inequalities, and global crises, the ethics and politics of care have taken on renewed significance. At the same time, notions of responsibility are being redefined, distributed, and resisted across multiple actors, including patients, families, healthcare professionals, communities, and states
We encourage submissions that critically examine the ways in which care is both an ethical practice and a site of power, and how responsibility is ascribed, internalized, or contested in different medical and socio-political landscapes.
We welcome papers engaging with, but not limited to, the following themes:
- Moral economies of care and the distribution of responsibility (Mol 2008; Han 2012);
‑Care work and the burdens of responsibility within families and communities (Ticktin 2011; Thelen 2015);
‑Intersections between care, responsibility and gendered expectations (Glenn 2012);
‑Institutional care practices and systemic failures in assuming responsibility (Garcia 2010; Livingston 2012);
‑The impact of neoliberal reforms and policies on shaping responsibilities (Muehlebach 2012);
– Health policies and the delegation of responsibility to patients and caregivers (Biehl 2013);
– Indigenous, feminist, and decolonial perspectives on care and responsibility (Briggs and Mantini-Briggs 2003; Puig de la Bellacasa 2017);
– The role of the state in care provision and the politics of neglect (Das 2015; Redfield 2013);
– Global health interventions and transnational responsibilities (Nguyen 2010; Adams 2016).
More info at https://www.waucongress2025.org/panel/?id=892
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